Aleksey Muratov: The course of Bitcoin has risen to a record but the danger of hard fork has not passed

This week, the Bitcoin rate has grown significantly on most of the largest exchanges and on Wednesday, April 26, it exceeded $1,300. However, according to Сhairman of the Board of the International Public Movement Change the World Together Aleksey Muratov, this does not mean that the danger of hard fork for this cryptocurrency has already passed.

As Aleksey Muratov reminded, from the beginning of 2017 Bitcoin experienced a set of shocks that first led to a drop in rate, and then some loss of confidence. "Primarily this is about the problems that the largest Chinese exchanges had with the authorities, as well as the potential hard fork of Bitcoin Unlimited. A slump of prices could lead to a complete crash of this cryptocurrency," he said.

However, recent stabilizing measures have made it possible to return Bitcoin to the level of historical maximum. "At the moment, the main factor which determines the fixed Вitcoin positions is the increasing possibility of Segregated Witness (SegWit) activation, as a way to solve a number of network scaling problems. So, the activation of SegWit in other crypto-currencies, including Litecoin, Syscoin and DigiByte, has already led to a significant increase of their price. According to a number of experts, Bitcoin most likely will also grow in price in a case of SegWit activation," Aleksey Muratov noted.

In addition, a few days ago the Securities and Exchange Commission of US (SEC) granted the request of BATS Global Exchange to reconsider its decision to refuse a start of Bitcoin-ETF of the Winklevoss brothers. "Initially, the commission refused to start the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust on March 10, explaining that it is impossible to change the rules of exchange because of the Bitcoin "unpredictability". But after filing of an appeal and the possibility of revising the SEC's decision, the Winklevoss brothers had a chance to become the first exchange-traded fund in the history of financial markets which would work only with Bitcoin. These prospects also had a positive impact on the Bitcoin rate and on Thursday, April 27, it was $1,309 for Bitstamp, $1,309 for Kraken, $1,312 for GDAX and $1,307 for Gemini," Aleksey Muratov explained.

At the same time, he is sure that China will not back down its idea of Bitcoin privatizing, so its hard fork is inevitable. "I do not think that the Chinese authorities will give up their idea to take control of Bitcoin and pinch its piece in their favor off. Too much for this was done by the regulator, so hard fork of Bitcoin will still happen. In this regard, I consider it extremely important to introduce an alternative completely decentralized cryptocurrency into circulation," Aleksey Muratov emphasized.

This project was proposed by experts of the International Public Movement Change the World Together in March. "Our developers have prepared a new completely decentralized and self-regulating electronic currency PRIZM which is now actively used by our supporters. But I'm sure that in the near future there will be other cryptocurrencies alternative to Bitcoin," Aleksey Muratov stated.

As an example, he brought a new development of American programmer and creator of BitTorrent Bram Cohen. "The other day Cohen announced the creation of a new cryptocurrency, which as he said would be a response to the challenges facing Bitcoin. In his development he took into account the elimination of those disadvantages that are inherent in Bitcoin including too wasteful consumption of resources. Cohen considers that the method of mining proof-of-capacity is economically more efficient, which does not require expensive and super-powerful equipment but uses space on the hard disk," Chairman of the Board of CWT said.

According to him, despite the fact that Bitcoin is still one of the leading electronic currencies in the world, the technical miscalculations and disadvantages of this cryptocurrency have made it one of the most vulnerable. "Developers of new projects using the Bitcoin example take into account these disadvantages in their works. Now the turn of new generation cryptocurrencies came and among them PRIZM is noticeable. In my opinion, and according to the estimates of many expert groups, today it is the best decentralized financial instrument which our future stands for," Aleksey Muratov resumed.